Matthew Cowan’s para field notes (6–22 April 2018) revolving around folk customs and traditions is the newest exhibition collaboration between Saari residence and Hippolyte.

Matthew Cowan’s exhibition para field notes reveals itself to be in the present day in the springtime, however at the centre of the exhibition are ancient customs and superstitions. The show approaches the constellation of ideas that make up our established idea of the countryside by presenting an imaginary setting of historical, folkloristic, agricultural and biological works. The exhibition employs installations, photographs and video that show us mythologies and observations of Finnish native fauna while it also includes a selection of objects from the Tavastila Local Museum in Mietoinen as well as elements present in contemporary countryside.

Matthew Cowan (b. New Zealand) is a visual artist, based in Berlin and Helsinki, working in the realm of traditional European folk customs. His works play with the strangeness of the continued popularity of long established folk customs in a contemporary world. The show titled para field notes is the sixth edition of the exhibition collaboration between Photographic Gallery Hippolyte and Saari residence, maintained in Mynämäki by Kone Foundation. Matthew Cowan worked at the Saari residence first in 2013, again in 2015, and then as the invited artist from the autumn of 2016 until spring 2017.